***** Les Hurst of the George
Orwell Society, and Quentin Kopp (the son of George Kopp, George
Orwell's POUM commander in Spain) will be attending the GEORGE ORWELL AND
SOCIALISM
event at the Red Shed.

Comrades,

* Brian Bamford (Sec of
Tameside TUC and Sec of Bury Unite Commercial Branch) will be one of
several speakers at the GEORGE ORWELL AND SOCIALISM event at the Red
Shed, Vicarage Street, Wakefield WF1 on Saturday 16th
September. The event starts at 1pm.

The area Brian will be covering in his talk is outlined below.

Fraternally

AlanStewart

Convenor, Wakefield Socialist History Group

Prof. Preston and George Orwell: The varieties of historical investigation and experience

A couple of years ago, at a
gathering of the International Brigade Memorial Trust, Professor Paul
Preston, describing George Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia, said:
‘It is not a bad book but the trouble is, it is
the only book many people read on the Spanish Civil War’ or words to
that effect. Pro. Preston suggested that ‘Homage to Catalonia’ was a
book written about the Spanish War from the narrow perspective of
someone who had only spent six or seven months involved
in the conflict on a quiet front in the North of Spain – Aragon &
Catalonia – and, that it left out much which the professional historian
could now encompass supported, as he is, by the enriched ‘body of
scholarship which has been published in Spanish, Catalan,
English … since 1996’ (see Preface to Preston’s The Spanish Civil War
[2006]). Is a modern history, written in a library by a professional
historian such as that of Professor Preston’s, to be preferred to a
first-hand account of the conflict written
almost in the heat of battle, or shortly afterwards? Will not the
professional historian and scholar’s account be more objective than that
written by the former combatant and novelist? Is not the one clearly
superior to the other? If not, how do we judge and
value these differing contributions?

Brian Bamford is an
ethno-methodologist/sociologist, who formerly worked as a maintenance
electrician. He is at present Secretary of Tameside Trade Union Council
and Secretary of Bury Unite the Union. He helped to
edit the Tameside TUC booklet on the 75th Anniversary of the Spanish Civil War [3rd Edition],...